Study: ‘Game Of Thrones’ makes our hearts race, but not for the reasons we think

Battles and dragonfire aren’t the only things about “Game Of Thrones” that get the pulse pounding, according to a new study.

If you don’t think Drogon and Dany raining fire onto the Lannister army is exhilarating, you might want to check your pulse.

However, after checking the respective pulses of 300 viewers and sifting through 2.3 million measurements, the developers of the Cardiogram app found that it’s not only the violence in Game Of Thrones that gets the heart racing — four out of the top five most pulse-pounding moments from season 7 have come from scenes largely involving dialogue and dramatic tension.

“The data confirms that drama rather than action is what makes Game of Thrones viewers’ heart rate race,” Brandon Ballinger, Cardiogram co-developer, said in a recent interview.

Ballinger’s started tracking heart rates during Thrones episodes in 2015. Participants were asked to start tracking 15 minutes before the episode began to set a base rate and the app did the rest, tracking the rate every five seconds for the duration of the episode.

For a 2017 follow-up, Ballinger found more of the same. He tracked heart rates for the first four episodes of season 7 and found that the five most exciting scenes for viewers were heavy on the action and relatively light on action. Number five was Daenerys’ interrogation of Varys in episode 1, which got the audience’s heart rate up to 76 bpm on average; numbers four and three were a tie, with Euron Greyjoy’s proposal to Cersei in episode 1 and Jon and Davos pleading for Dany’s help against the Night King in episode 3, both of which got up to 83 bpm; and second was the opening scene from episode 1, when Arya takes her revenge on House Frey, ratcheting up to 83.2 bpm.

Whose blood pressure didn’t spike when they saw Jaime charging toward a dragon?

The top pulse-pounding moment, however, was heavy on the action, with Jaime Lannister’s charge toward Dany and Drogon spiking viewers’ heart rates all the way up to 91 bpm.

“This is the one action scene in the top five,” Ballinger said, but he added that it did rely on the character conflicts that had already been established.

“True to principle, it focuses on a conflict between two main characters on opposite sides of a battle: Jaime Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, immediately preceded by a scene showing Tyrion Lannister’s internal conflict at seeing his family’s army set aflame,” he said.

The full details, with a link to Ballinger’s 2015 data, can be found here.

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